Why Are Anarchists and Dead People ‘Liking’ Corporations on Facebook?

Posted on Dec 11, 2012

Bernard Meisler was surprised to find that his recently deceased friend, who “hated corporate bullshit,” had returned from the afterlife to express his fondness for the Discover card on Facebook.

Facebook told Meisler that the social network continues to recycle likes unless they are informed that a member is no longer with us. But that doesn’t explain why a corporate-bullshit-hating friend would ever forget himself and like a credit card company.

Similar stories abound on Facebook. I once asked a friend whether Target paid him after I saw an ad claiming “Anthony likes Target!” He had no idea what I was talking about. Nor did many of the people Meisler contacted trying to get to the bottom of this mystery.

Why does a self-described anarchist, for instance, like Shell oil?

Facebook’s only explanation to Meisler is that people must be accidentally liking things, but that doesn’t pass the smell test and it seems to happen far too often. Then again, when more than a billion people actively use your service, anything can happen often.

Read more about some of the stranger examples of erroneous likes discovered by Meisler on ReadWriteSocial.